Insured for Murder has all the ingredients of a first-rate thriller: a murder, an insurance scam with a multimillion-dollar payoff, a playboy businessman, a sinister neurologist wielding a stun gun, false identities, and an international manhunt. Robin Yocum and Catherine Candisky, two reporters with The Columbus Dispatch, describe how they unravelled a con game that was three years in the making. On the morning of April 16, 1988, the emergency squad was called to the office of Dr. Richard P. Boggs, a respected neurologist in Glendale, California. On the floor of the examining room was the alleged body of Melvin E. Hanson, the vice president of the Just Sweats athletic clothing store chain, based in Columbus, Ohio. Apparently, he had collapsed and died of heart failure during a routine examination. Early next morning, Hanson's business partner and the company president, John B. Hawkins, arrived from Columbus and had the body unceremoniously cremated. The coroner ruled that Hanson had died of natural causes, so there was nothing to be investigated, and the Glendale police did not pursue the case further. Behind the facade of just another mortality statistic, however, was the yet-undiscovered fact that the body lying on the floor was not Hanson's. The corpse was an anonymous double who had been murdered in a scheme to fraudulently collect on Hanson's life insurance policy. The deception was eventually uncovered by an insurance investigator, but only after one million dollars had been paid to John Hawkins, the sole beneficiary of Hanson's life insurance policy. But the full extent of the scam might never have been discovered except for the hard-nosed efforts of Yocum and Candisky, whodoggedly pursued the story and published the results of their investigation in a series of articles in The Columbus Dispatch. Piece by piece they revealed what was intended to be a five-million-dollar scheme of fraud and murder, and unmasked Hanson and Hawkins as con men with a history of perpetrating insurance scams. Their reports finally moved the Los Angeles County District Attorney to launch an investigation that resulted in Boggs being convicted of murder and Hanson and Hawkins awaiting trials that are scheduled to start before the end of 1993. Insured for Murder takes the reader beyond the facts of the investigation and explores the characters of three thoroughly corrupt individuals: Dr. Richard P. Boggs, who committed murder for a share of the insurance money; Melvin E. Hanson, the enigmatic schemer, who faked his own death and engineered the death of an unwitting imposter; and John B. Hawkins, the young stud willing to gamble his business and his life on a conspiracy for easy money.

Great Crossover with YA MarketJimmy Lee Hickam grew up deep in the bowels of Appalachian Ohio, on the poorest road in the poorest county in the poorest region of the state. To make things worse, the name Hickam is synonymous with trouble. Jimmy Lee hails from a mix of thieves, moonshiners, and drunkards who for decades have clung to both the hardscrabble hills and the iron bars of every jail cell in the region. This life, Jimmy Lee believes, is his destiny: working with his drunkard father at the sawmill, or sitting next to his arsonist brother in the penitentiary.If not for an inspiring coach and Jimmy Lee's ability to play football, he would not have returned for his junior year in high school. When his visionary English teacher cuts Jimmy Lee a break, preserving his eligibility for the coming football season, he rewards her with a winning essay in the high school writing contest.When irate parents and administration claim he has cheated, his teacher takes Jimmy Lee's writing talent as far as it can go, showing him the path out of the hills of Appalachia.Terrific characterizations, surprising revelations, gut-wrenching past betrayals, and an unforgettable cast of characters borne of the dusty worn-out landscape of Southeastern Ohio, make The Essay a powerful, evocative, and incredibly moving novel. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

After his unspectacular professional baseball career ends with a knee injury in Toledo, Ohio, Johnny Earl gets busted for selling cocaine. After serving seven years in prison, all he wants to do is return to his hometown of Steubenville, retrieve the drug money he stashed before he went to jail, and start a new life where no one has ever heard of Johnny Earl. However, before he can leave town with his money, Johnny is picked up for questioning in the murder of Rayce Daubner, the FBI informant who had set him up on drug charges in the first place. Then his former prison cellmate shows up-a white supremacist who wants the drug money to help fund an Aryan nation in the wilds of Idaho. Five memorable characters, each with a separate agenda, come together in this layered tale of murder, deceit, and political intrigue.